Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/102

88 pine are short and spreading close to the trunk, sometimes perfect cups or rays are formed. Pitch pines present rough, massy grenadier plumes, each having a darker spot or cavity in the end where you look in to the bud. I listen to the booming of the pond as if it were a reasonable creature. I return at last in the rain, and am coated with a glaze, like the fields.

After talking with uncle Charles, the other night, about the worthies of this country, Webster and the rest, as usual, considering who were geniuses and who not, I showed him up to bed; and when I had got into bed myself I heard the chamber door opened, after eleven o'clock, and he called out in an earnest, stentorian voice, loud enough to wake the whole house, &quot;Henry! was John Quincy Adams a genius?&quot; &quot;No, I think not,&quot; was my reply. &quot;Well, I didn't think he was,&quot; answered he.

Jan. 1, 1854. Le Jeune, referring to the death of a young Frenchwoman who had devoted her life to the savages of Canada, uses this expression: &quot;Finally this beautiful soul detached itself from its body the 15th of March,&quot; etc.

The drifts mark the standstill or equilibrium between the currents of air or particular winds. In our greatest snow-storms, the wind being northerly, the greatest drifts are on the south